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Design 'Dores

An Inspiration: The Lindsey Paper

Posted by on Friday, November 9, 2018 in Project Updates.

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Stevenson Library

In the words of Pablo Picasso, “Good artists copy, but great artists steal.” We wouldn’t go so far as to say that the entire engineering design process is stealing, but through working on our senior design project up to this point, we found it helpful to draw inspiration from previously conceptualized designs of ultrasound helmets.

After our talk with Dr. Byram and Emelina, they guided us towards work done by a researcher with a similar goal, Dr. Brooks Lindsey of Duke University. In 2012, Dr. Lindsey successfully designed a system incorporating custom ultrasound array transducers for simultaneous temporal imaging. Even though his work was primarily dedicated towards visualization of the internal microvasculature environment in stroke patients, the process of imaging the internal environment is similar to our project and we can develop upon his design by combining its functionalities with our design perspectives and an electroencephalogram.

From reading Dr. Lindsey’s paper and understanding what functionalities his ultrasound helmet had, we were able to point out certain differences of his helmet from the one that we will be building:

  • Use of arrays, not probes, as directed by Dr. Byram
  • Use of only two ultrasound probes, one at each temple; our design will plan for three probes: two temporal and one suboccipital

What we learned from his model:

  • Two temporal arrays and an additional suboccipital array
  • Increase of SNR by reducing the length of probe cables
  • Probes must be both flexible and rigid at the same time
    • We drew inspiration to not only have our probes pivot, but also to have a locking mechanism (once they are perpendicular to the surface of the skin) – all outlined in our design specifications.
A previous update describes our idea of the system's capabilities and components. These can be compared to Dr. Lindsey's iteration pictured.
A previous update describes our idea of the system’s capabilities and components. These can be compared to Dr. Lindsey’s iteration pictured.

Reference

Lindsey BD, Light ED, Nicoletto HA, Bennett ER, Laskowitz DT, Smith SW. The ultrasound brain helmet: new transducers and volume registration for in vivo simultaneous multi-transducer 3-D transcranial imaging. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2011;58(6):1189-202.